Towards a Model of Services Based on Cocreation, Abstraction and Rights Distribution

Abstract

The term service is today defined and used in a multitude of ways, which are often ambiguous and contradictory. The absence of a commonly agreed-upon definition of the term makes it difficult to distinguish, describe and classify services. In order to address these issues, this chapter proposes a model of services that helps in analysing the concept. The model encompasses three perspectives: service as a means for cocreation of value, service as a means for abstraction and service as a means for distributing rights. The model does not suggest a definition of the term service but shows how the service concept can be analysed using a number of related concepts, like service resource, service process and service offering. The model has its theoretical foundation in the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology and Hohfeld’s classification of rights.

Keywords

Service Process Internal Resource Service Resource Resource Type Service Contract

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